


the bonds we don't expect

by Fuzzyface



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, IPRE Crew - Freeform, Non-Chronological, Some angst, Stolen Century, this is 6k words of fish meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 07:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13185138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzzyface/pseuds/Fuzzyface
Summary: The story of a journalist, her friends, and their interdimensional jellyfish.(Or, Lucretia and the voidfish, before and during the worst year of her life)





	the bonds we don't expect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassowarykisses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassowarykisses/gifts).



> Secret santa gift for cassowarykisses on tumblr!! They asked for missing scenes with Lucretia and (I think? I hope?) this fits. I admit I took the prompt in a bit of an unusual direction, so I sincerely hope that you enjoy it anyway, and you can also maybe forgive the fact that you’re getting this gift several days late.
> 
> I played very fast and loose with canon here, so not all the details in this fic might be strictly accurate. Rules are made be broken and canon is made to be disregarded.
> 
> (All the thanks in the world to my beta, Hannah, for dealing with me being a huge mess throughout this whole process. You’re the best.)

_The voidfish was never quiet._

 _Nobody else ever seemed to notice. Or if they did, they never said anything about it. Probably, Lucretia assumed, because their sleeping quarters weren’t directly next to the storage room where Magnus’ shoddily (_ lovingly _, he insisted) constructed tank had been nestled in among pipes and spare parts._

_It was like living next to an untuned piano. One that was perpetually playing itself. Damn, that was terrible. She’d find a better metaphor to put in her records later._

_Every once in a while though, maybe when it was in a good mood (as good a mood as a blob of interdimensional jelly could be in), it wouldn’t so much sing as just… hum. A low, constant note, like someone pressing down a piano key and letting it intone forever. It would echo through the whole ship until she could feel it through the floor. Not unpleasant, but steady. It was as soothing as anything on the ship could ever be, so more often then not she would tuck her journal under her arm, tiptoe down the hall, and hope that ‘Fisher’ wouldn’t mind if she took advantage of the living white noise machine to get some work done._

_Unfortunately, she was rarely the only one who had that idea._

_“What are you feeding that thing, anyway?” Lucretia asked, her legs tucked uncomfortably under her as she perched on a crate. Her notebook was open on her lap, pen poised over it in an illusion of productivity, but watching the spectacle in front of her was proving more distracting than she would admit._

_“Fisher exists on love,” Magnus replied cheerfully, elbow deep in the murky water as he patted the sea monster like a lap dog. To his credit, it seemed to be enjoying it, turning circles in the tank as it hummed contentedly. “Also books, sometimes. It really likes those, don’t you, buddy?” He scritched the top of its dome and it pulsed with light._

_“It_ eats _them?”_

_“Maybe? It might just absorb them. I’ve never asked.” He broke into a delighted laugh as the creature latched onto his hand with its shimmering tendrils, like a kitten playing rough. “Look! I told you it’s learning how to fight!”_

_Lucretia tapped her pen aimlessly against the page as she watched Magnus chase the fish around the tank with his hand, not seeming at all bothered by the water that sloshed over the top and ran down the front of his jacket. She wasn’t as bizarrely attuned to the creature’s every mood like Magnus was, but it seemed to be… happy. Like it understood and appreciated Magnus’ smothering affection, and didn’t just happen to tolerate being petted and fussed over._

_She didn’t understand it. But then again, nobody except Magnus really did. Who were they to get in the way of the special bond between a man and his jellyfish?_

_“Why do you keep it in the tank anyway?” She asked after the second time a jerk of his arm splashed inky water onto her robe. “You could walk it around the ship on a leash if you wanted. Lup and Barry told you it doesn’t need water to breathe.”_

_Lup and Barry had also admitted that that was just about the only thing they did know about it after spending two sleepless nights prodding at it under Magnus’ anxious watch. It was a scientific enigma, Barry said. It was a scientific nightmare from hell, Lup said._

_“Yeah, but I think it likes being able to swim,” Magnus said. “It doesn’t_ have _to stay there, anyway. But everybody needs a cozy bed.”_

_He finally pulled his arm from the tank, shaking black-ish water from his hand as the fish blinked in protest. “Shh, shh, don’t worry,” he cooed, patting the glass comfortingly. “I brought you something to play with, little guy.”_

_Lucretia was already sketching what he held in his hand before he even pulled it from his jacket pocket. It was a much neater job than the last few, she noted silently, tracing the smooth carving lines along the duck’s back, and even the faintly-scratched imprint of feathers along its wing._

Magnus’ fourth duck this cycle _, she wrote neatly in the margins._ Unknown if he will ever try to carve something else.

_“Hey Luc,” he asked, pulling her from her doodling. He cupped the duck protectively in his hands, like he was trying to keep the fish from seeing it. “Do you, uh, do you wanna try giving it this one?”_

_She raised her eyebrows. “And take credit for your beautiful creation?”_

_Magnus laughed, a sharp, loud sound against the baby fish’s steady humming. “No, I think it would like it,” he insisted. “Come on, you’re in here all the time and it barely even knows you. Do you want it to grow up not knowing half of its family?”_

_She wasn’t sure if she’d just been implicated in some sort of unfortunate extraterrestrial co-parenting scheme and she didn’t really want to ask. “I think you more than make up for any sort of emotional neglect on my part,” she said simply, watching as Magnus’ face fell into a pout of disappointment._

_He turned back to the fish, patting the front of the tank gently like he was trying to console the creature. “Don’t worry, she’ll warm up to you eventually,” he promised, leaning over to carefully plunk the wooden carving into the water. To her credit, it certainly didn’t seem to care who presented the duck, wrapping the toy in its tendrils and spinning in cheerful circles._

_“What does it do with those, anyway?” She asked, getting a nonchalant shrug in response._

_“Just plays with them, I guess. It’s just a baby y’know.”_

_At the receiving of its toy, the voidfish seemed to settle, the lights in its bell pulsing soft blues and purples. Its humming slowed to a contented purr that she could feel in her chest. Maybe Magnus could feel it too, because when she looked back the fighter’s eyes were closed in a peaceful grin._

~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~

The voidfish was silent when she woke up.

She heard nothing as she drifted back to consciousness in in a room filled with smoke and blinking alarm lights. She heard nothing as she made her way through the damaged ship, checking again and again for any sign of the crew and finding nothing. She heard nothing as she stepped out to the bitter landscape outside to survey the insurmountable damage in front of her. She heard nothing as she shakily noted in her journal the state of the ship (ruined) and the state of the crew (one). A suffocating, painful silence that she swore she would never let herself get used to.

She didn’t even think about the voidfish at first. Her loneliness felt so absolute, so damning. The ship couldn’t feel more empty if she were the only living creature on the planet.

Maybe she was. She didn’t know anything. She didn’t know _anything_ except that she had a broken ship and six friends gone.

She took inventory with shaking hands, desperately needing something to do to keep her mind quiet. What was still standing. What she could potentially fix. What couldn’t possibly be repaired. She filled six pages before the words stopped making sense even to her.

The sun was down. The fire was out. She’d done all she could for now. She made her way back to her room. Sleep seemed unthinkable but darkness and stillness was an inviting concept. The hallway still flared red - on and off again - alarm lights she had no idea how to disable. She didn’t see the water until she almost walked straight through it.

It looked like someone had poured a gallon of oil across the floor. The shimmering black pool seeped out from under the storeroom door, leaching out across the tile and lapping at the walls. She stared at it for a moment, uncomprehending, before she registered that something besides water was leaking out from the closed door: a deathly silence.

Lucretia had a theory, one she’d tentatively outlined in her journals but had never spoken out loud. She didn’t want to see the look on Magnus’ face if she did. But it was undeniable that the seven of them seemed to possess, through whatever unknown quality or curse, abilities that nobody else in the universe had. Whatever it was that pulled them back from the dead, molecule by molecule, every year, it was buried within them. It wasn’t buried within the dozens of people they’d tried to save, again and again, before they realized it was useless. It wasn’t buried within Fisher.

Either she was alone or she wasn’t. Either Magnus would never forgive her or everything would be fine. 

She rushed in. The water soaked through her shoes, cold and oily, and for a moment in the pitch darkness it was the only sensation she could comprehend. The crash had blown out the lights in the room; it scattered debris across the floor that crunched under her feet. It took her far too long to realize that the faint blue shimmer in the corner of her eye wasn’t just an after-effect of exhaustion.

“Fisher?” She tried cautiously, and all at once the light spread through the room. 

It could have been worse. It’s what she wrote later. It could have been a lot worse. The tank was tipped on its side, its contents emptied out across the floor, but the glass hadn’t shattered. In the far corner, floating in the last inch of water, the voidfish was a hunched ball of light.

She did all she could. She pushed the tank back upright, threw towels down on the floor, filled buckets with water from the shower until there was at least enough to cover the creature’s head. The horrific rattling sound that the pipes made as they pumped water was yet something else she would have to deal with later.

The voidfish didn’t move as she worked, and as soon as it had enough water it sank below the surface and lay still once more, it’s pulsing light fading to a barely-visible shimmer.

She wished she understood it the way Magnus did, wished she had the nerve to place her hand on its bell and soothe it somehow. She wished she had words besides the ones on her page. It was a terrified baby and she felt just as helpless.

Wordlessly, she pressed a hand against the glass. One last attempt at comfort. It shank back instantly, humming in a shrill, discordant way that she’d never heard before. Whether it was in fear, confusion, or question, she didn’t know. She let her hand fall back to her side.

“I’m not Magnus,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~

_“Do you think I should give it a name?” Magnus asked, not bothering to swallow his mouthful of pancakes first._

_“What,” Merle replied, sliding into the seat next to him with the pot of coffee, “your first chest hair?”_

_“_ No, _” Magnus finally got out after a moment of affronted sputtering. “I’ve got - I have more chest hair than you have on your whole body, old man.” As if certain he needed to back that up, he fumbled angrily with the clasp of his jacket._

_“For Pan’s sake, keep your clothes on,” Davenport sighed, pouring his third mug of coffee. “People are still trying to eat here.”_

_The soft orange light from this planet’s sun filtered through the port windows and lit up the room in shades of warm auburn. Even though the Starblaster’s kitchen was more ‘prison mess hall’ then ‘homely dining room’, seated around the table with sleep-mussed hair and dappled in sunlight, they looked like any family having breakfast together. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, they had a morning where the only urgent thing pulling them from their beds was the promise of fresh pancakes._

_“_ Anyway _,” Magnus continued pointedly, “I meant the baby. We need to call it something or it’s going to grow up confused.”_

_“More confused than it is living in a broom closet several dimensions away from its home?” Lup deadpanned, plucking a pancake off Magnus’ plate while he yelped indignantly. “So what are you going to call the little tyke?”_

_“Well - and this is just a suggestion - what about Magnus Jr?” He had the nerve to look surprised at the collective groans from the rest of the table. “What? What’s wrong with that?”_

_“Everything,” Lup said._

_“I think one of you is enough,” Davenport said._

_He pouted over this for a few seconds. “Well, what am I supposed to call it?”_

_Taako’s suggestion of ‘Filet-o-Fish’ got his chair kicked. “It was a_ joke _, you oaf,” he whined, rubbing his leg sullenly. “Now you’ve earned Magnus Jr a one-way ticket to the frying pan for real.”_

_“Hold up, I’ve got it,” Lup interjected with a wave of her hand. “It’s like a big fish made of jelly that swallowed a galaxy, yeah? So let’s call it Space Jam.”_

_“It needs a scientific name,” Barry piped up. “It’s technically a new species. And, uh, a pretty endangered one too now.”_

_“Yeah, that’s what I was suggesting,” Lup said, punching him in the arm._

_“I kind of like Lup’s idea,” Magnus said thoughtfully._

_Taako sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Hey, ‘Cretia,” he said, addressing her for the first time. “Got any ideas in that big head of yours?”_

_She set her pen down and considered for a moment. “All I’ll say is this,” she said finally, trying to affect as much solemnity as she could, “whatever name you pick is going to be recorded for all of time. Thousands,_ maybe _millions of people will know what you named this literally magical fish. I assume, of course, you plan to become a big goddamn deal after all of this is over.”_

_“I do,” Magnus agreed emphatically. His thick eyebrows creased together in obvious thought and stayed that way for several long, silent seconds, before shooting up almost to his hairline as he sat up with a start. “Fisher!” He exclaimed._

_From beside him, Merle barked out a laugh, “I hope you didn’t strain yourself thinking of that one.”_

_“No, it’s a good name,” Magnus insisted. “I didn’t hear you offering any better idea.”_

_“It’s short and to the point,” Lup said with a shrug, “I’ll give him that.”_

_“It’s perfect,” he insisted, heaping the last of the pancakes onto his plate. “Fisher the fish.”_

_“I’m sure you’re a very proud parent, Maggie,” Taako said._

~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~

She was the only one who called it the voidfish.

There were plenty of practical reasons for it, the reasons that went into her records: The endless swirl of stars floating in the bell of its body, the way it always seemed to turn its tank water an inky black no matter how often Magnus cleaned it, the noises it made that came from nowhere and everywhere at once. It was a fitting title.

 _Besides,_ she wrote, _if I made a habit of referring to everything the way Magnus wanted it to be called, these records would be functionally unreadable._

There was another reason, though, one that she suspected she was the only one to know about. Though, she had to admit, she’d made no effort to change that. Secrecy wasn’t something she was used to anymore. Spend 60 years with the same people on the same ship and privacy becomes a faraway concept, as irrational as the idea of personal space. If one of them knew something, then all of them knew it; it was a rule that didn’t even need to be spoken.

She wasn’t keeping it from them for any malicious reasons. It probably wasn’t even important anyway, just a meaningless discovery she’d made, and on accident at that. There was just something in her head, like an insistent itch, that told her that maybe there were certain things that she should keep to herself. It was a luxury she rarely had.

Besides, how would she possibly even explain it to anyone? She barely even understood it herself.

If she had to guess, it must have been something that happened the first day she’d even seen the voidfish, when Magnus had led her into the mysterious cave to meet the bizarre and fascinating creature he’d somehow befriended through woodwork. Almost immediately after they’d arrived, after the fish had made its unfortunate and wet greeting, the stillness of the night was cut through with a sudden and inexorable burst of music.

She didn’t hear it in the natural way. Instead, it was just the way it was when Lup and Barry’s duet had been broadcast across the planet. Audible, but internal. But this time it was a hundred songs at once, on a hundred different instruments, all overlapping in a cacophony that would have been unendurable had it not been somehow muted, like she were recalling it from a dream. She’d assumed without asking that this was just yet another effect of being so near the enigmatic creatures. If it bothered Magnus at all, though, he hadn’t shown it.

The songs stuck with her, in the same way that the memories of various worlds did. They would return to her in broken snippets when she let her mind drift too far, or when there was a rare lull of noise on the ship. If she concentrated, she could separate them enough to get one or two stuck in her head. She’d hum them to herself absently as she wrote and thought nothing of it. It was no different than how she still heard Barry sometimes murmur the notes to his fateful piano compositions during long nights at his desk.

He’d been doing it too as she helped him wash dishes one evening, working together with ease but never speaking as they’d carefully scrubbed away any evidence of the disastrous meal he’d attempted to make. He wasn’t much of a cook - neither of them were - but with both the twins gone this cycle he’d made a worthwhile effort to make them something other than boxed noodles and oatmeal. Or maybe it was just another way to try to deal with Lup’s absence.

She’d listened to him hum the notes softly as he massaged soap into a sponge, eyes on his hands but mind clearly somewhere far away. He hadn’t even seemed aware he was doing it until he stumbled over a note and stiffened suddenly, cutting the sound off as he dipped his head self-consciously.

As eloquent as she might be with a pen a paper, she’d had no idea how to shape words into anything that would fit into such a fragile situation. So instead, she hummed too, picking up where he left off with a plain harp melody that she’d been unable to forget since the day the Hunger arrived at the conservatory. There was something comforting in the simple tune, one she heard in her head often as she drifted on the edges of sleep.

She hadn’t expected Barry to flinch at the sound, almost dropping the plate he’d been holding as her whirled to face her. “Uh-” he’d started, blinking in confusion, “Did you say something, Luc?”

“N-no?” She’d replied, equally startled and considerably more confused. “Just… humming.” It had sounded stupid, admitted out loud, and she’d felt the need to murmur a few more bars as if to prove it.

He’d stared at her with a look so uncomprehending that she’d wondered if maybe she’d just imagined him doing it before her, and she’d broken their vow of silence with complete insensitivity. He shook his head, setting the plate down in the sink. “God, this is going to sound insane,” he said, “but I swear all I hear from your mouth is static.”

“Oh,” was all she’d said. She hadn’t known how else to reply.

“Ah, hell, I’m probably just losing it,” he muttered, pushing aside his glasses to rub at his eyes. “It’s been a long night. You can go to bed if you want, Lu, I can finish this mess on my own.”

She’d written down the encounter as soon as she got back to her bunk, and then read it again and again as if it would divulge some sense to her if she did.

 _Could easily be some effect of this planet that we don’t yet know about,_ she wrote. _Not, of course, to discount the idea that Barry might just not have slept in the past four days, which is equally likely._

She hadn’t thought of it again, distracted yet another escape and reunions that very nearly turned tearful and a new planet with a new light to find, until she sat on a log in the middle of a dense jungle, stoking a dying fire as she and Magnus took their shift on watch. It had been looking increasingly like this planet was uninhabited by anything except exotic greenery, but she felt uneasy just the same, periodically counting the sleeping forms around her to be sure they were all still there.

She hadn’t even realized she’d been singing softly to herself. It had become a nervous tic by that point, something she would catch herself doing more and more as the cycles ran on. She’d wished her compulsions could have at least manifested as something a bit more discreet.

Magnus had caught her first though, head jerking up from where it had been starting to loll sleepily on his shoulders. “Hm? Lucretia?” He mumbled.

“Sorry,” she’d said immediately, feeling heat rush into her face. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“Pssh, I wasn’t _sleeping_ ,” he retorted, scrubbing at his eyes and sitting up straighter. “But, uh, if I somehow am at any point, just do that again, okay?”

“Do what?”

“You know,” he said, waving his hand vaguely. “That thing you just did. The –“ and he’d cut himself off by making a noise that sounded like someone violently shredding paper.

“I,” she said slowly, “absolutely did not do that.”

“Okay, suuuure,” he laughed, stretching hugely with a yawn. “Do you think we can just wake Barry up now and tell him it’s his turn? He’s probably gotten enough sleep by now.”

She hadn’t replied. Instead, keeping her eyes carefully fixed on the withering fire, she hummed the same song again, just for a moment. From the other side of the firepit, she saw Magnus leap to his feet.

“Alright, I get it, you’re messing with me,” he said with a nervous laugh. “For real, though, how are you making that sound?”

“Magnus,” she said carefully, “what do you hear when I do this?” She only hummed three notes before she saw Magnus’ eyebrows scrunch in confusion.

“Uh,” he replied, “it _sounds_ like you’re saying - “ and again he made a sharp gnashing sound in his throat.

She’d wondered if perhaps she’d somehow run afoul of an incredibly specific curse. They’d certainly seen stranger things over the years. But no, that couldn’t be right, it would have resolved itself as soon as the cycle ended. Wouldn’t it have? The rules they lived by were so frustratingly vague.

“Hang on,” she’d said. If it killed her, she was going to discern from logic from the situation before Magnus wrote her off as completely insane. “What about this?” Her mind scrambled for a recognizable piece of music and settled on the piano tune she’s heard second-hand so many times.

Magnus tipped his head curiously, letting out an amused snort. “Uh, okay, that’s Barry’s dumb love song I think? Am I being graded on this?”

She should have woken up Lup and Barry. She should have tried harder to explain things to Magnus. Something was incredibly, inexplicably wrong and they needed to figure it out. _All_ of them.

“I think our shift is over now,” she’d said instead. “Goodnight, Magnus.”

She set aside an entire separate journal, kept it hidden away from the others and filled it up in the dead of night. Everything she knew, everything she didn’t, theories and then vehement redactions of those theories, until she was down to one insistent idea she couldn’t disprove.

_Whatever species Magnus’ fish belongs to has the power to make people remember things. There’s a possibility it can make people forget them too._

She called it the voidfish after that. Not often out loud but, well, accidents happen. Magnus had laughed the first time he heard it.

“What was so bad about ‘Fisher’?” He asked.

“This suits it,” she said.

~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~

_“Nice hat,” Lucretia said, leaning against the doorframe. “It’s a bold style.”_

_Magnus laughed, sitting up on his bunk and brushing stray slivers of wood off the sheets. From its perch on his shoulders, Fisher flickered in protest at the movement and wrapped its tendrils more tightly around his head. “You think? It’s been doing that a lot lately. I think it likes to watch me carve.” He held up the half-finished duck proudly and the fish glimmered in delight._

_“I don’t blame it. Your mastery over all forms of waterfowl is impeccable.”_

_She teased him for the endless stream of duck carvings - they all did - but she couldn’t deny that he was starting to come into some real skill. Of all the arbitrary and sometimes truly inexplicable skills each of them had taken up during their year at the conservatory, Magnus was the only one who’d stuck to his with an unexpected fervor. Even she hadn’t been able to do any sort of serious painting since that year; there had just been too much else to worry about._

_“Did’ya need anything, Luc?” He asked, setting his carving aside. The fish hummed in protest._

_“No,” she said honestly, and then less honestly, “I was just taking a break from working.”_

_She was taking a break, she supposed, but only from staring vacantly at a blank page, occasionally writing the start of a sentence before scribbling it out in a furious mess of ink. The words in her head and the words on the page refused to line up. Maybe, she finally conceded, she needed to take a walk. Frustration only seemed to beget more frustration; more crumbled piles of ruined paper in her wastebasket._

_She loathed the term “writer’s block”. It had such a gruesome unavoidability to it, like she wasn’t even good enough to do her one single job correctly. She was just taking a break._

_“Oh. Well, don’t be a stranger,” Magnus said, scooting back and patting the end of his mattress invitingly. “Gotta use this rustic hospitality somewhere.”_

_She sat down gratefully. All the beds on the Starblaster were the same size – regulation cots that took up as little space as possible – but Magnus’ always seemed to be the biggest. Half of his allotted packing space seemed to have been taken up by quilts and pillows, which he piled together all at once into a massive, comfortable heap._

_“It reminds me of home,” he’d explained when the twins tried ribbing him about it once._

_“Did you grow up on a cloud?” Lup laughed._

_But now, running her hands over the patchwork and the uneven stitching, Lucretia understood. Someone had made these for him. Someone who was long gone now._

_“So your carving,” she said quickly, guestering to Magnus’ half-finished work. “Is that for…”_

_“Fisher?” He finished, face lighting up in a grin, “Yep! Turns out it’s still really into ducks.” He waved the carving in front of the creature’s bell, laughing as it swiped curiously at it with shimmering tendrils._

_“Have you ever tried to give it anything_ other _than ducks?”_

_“Nah,” he shrugged. “Why ruin a good thing, you know?” He retrieved his knife and went back to cutting neat slivers of wood from the duck’s tail. As if in approval, the fish floated a circle around Magnus’ head, bell flashing with color, before setting back on its shoulder perch._

_“It’s really not afraid of you at all,” she couldn’t help but whisper, and immediately felt bad for it. “Not as if- I mean- not to say that it_ should - “

_“It’s alright,” Magnus said with a wave of his hand. “I get it.”_

_It had only been two cycles since Magnus had first tumbled in through the doors of the Starblaster with a writhing ball of space fish in his arms. He couldn’t save the others, he’d said, but he had to save this one. For weeks it was listless, bobbing silently in its makeshift tank and shrinking away when anyone approached. Lucretia didn’t know if it understood what had happened on its home planet, but it knew it was alone and frightened and very, very far away._

_Magnus wouldn’t give up on it. With more patience than anyone had ever seen from the fighter, he’d sat quietly in front of the baby for hours, rolling wooden ducks back and forth across the floor and speaking gently to it. If she just so happened to leave her bedroom door open a sliver at night, she could hear him sometimes. He’d tell it about his day, about what Taako had made for lunch, about the status of the prank war he and Lup were in the middle of._

_Sometimes he’d just hum, a shaky and off-key rendition of some of the cheerful melodies the voidfish had sung while Magnus and Lucretia had kept it company in its home cave. She was wide awake the night that she heard the humming the room over finally, tentatively be joined by a second tone. She stayed up for another hour, writing down every note of the first song Magnus had prompted from the creature. And, in a rare indulgence of artistic liberty, she left out the part where Magnus had immediately burst into tears._

_To everyone else, it seemed as though Magnus had just disappeared one day and turned up a month later with a baby fish riding on his shoulders._

_“You know,” Magnus said, thoughtfully slowly the strokes of his knife, “and I know this is going to sound dumb, but… I kinda like taking care of it. It needs me.”_

_Something about the way he said it, the way he kept his eyes firmly fixed down, struck her with a pang of poignancy._

_“Other people need you too, Magnus,” she said._

_He laughed, shaking his head. “Nah, you guys just need me to take the big hits. You don’t - It’s not like -” he hesitated, flicking away a splinter with his thumb, “I’m not_ necessary.”

_“Well, don’t sell yourself short,” she tried, watching as he still refused to meet her eyes._

_“I’m not,” he insisted, “I’m just being realistic. I’m the muscle and that’s all. And that’s fine!”_

_Magnus was always a sincere man, open and loud about his feelings, but such overt vulnerability was different. This was different. Not in the least because of the unfortunate sting of sympathy in her chest._

_She wished she knew how to articulate that she thought the same thing sometimes, too often, lying awake at night or watching silently from the window as the rest of the crew set off on some important mission. It wasn’t as if they didn’t try, again and again, to convince her to join, but kind formalities didn’t mean anything in the face of reality. Her crewmates had their skills, their wits, their charisma and their strength. Lucretia had... her books._

_“All of us are here for a reason,” she said instead._

_“Yeah,” he said, finally looking up with a wry grin. “Some of us are here for navigating or cooking or… sciencing. I’m here for punchin’.” He shrugged helplessly, gouging his knife into the wood._

_“And I’m here to take notes,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. “I suppose not everything can be of equal importance.”_

_The look of horrified concern that swept over Magnus’ face surprised her. “No, don’t say that,” he insisted immediately, reaching out hesitantly to touch her arm. “We wouldn’t even be doing this without you.”_

_She shrugged him off with a snort. “Let’s not get carried away.”_

_“Lucretia-”_

_“I’m not saying writing isn’t important, Magnus,” she said. “Telling stories will always be meaningful. But we’re on a_ life-or-death _mission now, not just an exploratory excursion. There are more important things that need to be done besides scribe work.”_

_“Like being a human shield?” He asked with a smirk._

_She smiled faintly. “Perhaps.”_

_“Maybe we should switch roles sometime,” he said. “You fight and I’ll write.”_

_“Absolutely not,” she said immediately. “We can’t take the risk that we might be better than each other. The consequences would be unthinkable.”_

_He laughed, a real, full laugh this time, and she felt some of the precarious tenderness in the room melt away._

_With one last swipe of his knife, Magnus seemed to be satisfied with his duck, holding the carving up to the light appreciatively. From his shoulder, the voidfish trilled in approval. “You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking that I might try to rebrand. Once we find somewhere to settle down.”_

_“Oh yeah?” She replied. “And what does that entail?”_

_“I’ll take up woodworking permanently,” he said, turning his creation over and over in his hands. “No more fighting - Well, less fighting. But I’m not just going to be ‘Magnus the Fighter’. I’ll be ‘Magnus the Craftsman.”_

_“A duck craftsman?”_

_“Maybe! You never know what the people need.”_

_Finally content that the duck was up to standards, he reached up to hand it to the voidfish, who chirped out several notes of delight before enfolding the toy in its tendrils. It purred like an oversized cat as it cheerfully twirled the duck around._

_“It does really seem to care about you, Magnus,” she said, finally slipping off his matress. “I’m glad that you have something like that.”_

_“You’ll have something to look after too someday, ‘Cretia,” he promised. “Once we find a planet to stay on I’m going to get you a dog.”_

_“Well, we’ll see about that.”_

~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ 

They could never pinpoint perfectly when the Hunger would arrive. ‘A year’ was a good estimate, and usually an accurate one. But on planets where time passed differently, where the light landed later than expected, or where they simply lost count of the days, it was hardly a perfect science. Give or take three days, Davenport finally decided, that’s what they’ll assume.

It had been 364 days since she had woken up alone.

Sleep was no longer something that happened on purpose. It was impossible, when every creak from her haphazard repairs was an earthquake and every sound was the beginning of the apocalypse. Sometimes she would lay down, if only to quiet her body’s protests, but it was rarely relaxing. When she did sleep, she’d only find out when we woke up several hours later with her face on a table and no memory of dreams.

There was nothing to do but wait. There was no hope of finding the Light (there never had been), there was nobody else she needed to ensure made it back to the ship safely. She simply had to sit, and watch, and wait for the world to end.

It was the middle of the night when she heard it. She’d given herself a reluctant hour to rest, hoping it would clear the incessant blurriness from her head, but in truth she had no idea how long it had been. She no longer really kept track of time; it was meaningless beyond whenever the sun set and rose.

The noise was soft, and that was the only thing that kept from from leaping from her bed for the length of steel pipe that rested against the wall. When things went to shit it was either fight or flight, and she’d come to realize over the year that there was rarely more than one option for her. 

It took her a moment to realize what it was, combing through memories of well over a year ago. It was the sound of the voidfish humming. Low and steady, the way it used to when life on the ship was quiet.

For some reason, she was positive that when she crossed into the room the noise would stop. Either by the voidfish’s doing or because she’d just been imagining it all along. It didn’t, though, nor did it seem to particularly acknowledge her presence. It bobbed gently in the dark water, tendrils drifting around it like the ends of a cloak. It was enough of an invitation.

The light grew brighter, just slightly, as she she sunk to the ground next to the tank. That, or it just seemed that way. But the voidfish didn’t stop its humming, not as she pressed her cheek to the cool glass, not as she closed her eyes and let the world start to lose focus.

She waited for the sun to rise. She waited for her friends to come back.

~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ 

_“Do you maybe need some help finding your room?”_

_Magnus groaned in response, sitting up just enough that the entire side of his face wasn’t smushed against the glass at least. In the light from the tank, his skin glowed blue. “Whuzz’at?” He mumbled, running a hand over his eyes._

_“You’re sleeping in the storage closet,” she replied._

_“Oh,” he said with a stretch, looking underwhelmed of all things. “What about it?”_

_“I… hadn’t assumed it was on purpose,” she said, somewhat stupefied. “Uh, sorry?”_

_“No, no, it’s fine,” he said, rolling over to lay more comfortably against the smooth glass wall. “I just like to stay in here sometimes. For Fisher. I think it helps keep him from getting lonely.”_

_“Does it get lonely?” She asked, glancing peering into the phosphorescent water. The voidfish bobbed peacefully up and down, betraying no hint of it’s feelings on the matter, if it had any._

_“Yeah, I think so,” Magnus said. “Can’t take the chance, anyway.” He sleepily gave the glass a few gentle pats._

_“I’ll leave you to it then,” she said._

_“It’s nice, too,” he mumbled softly as she slipped out the door. His eyes were closed again, and she wasn’t entirely sure if he was aware he was talking. “I like it here. It’s…. Nice.”_

~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ . ~ 

It was three days into the next cycle when Magnus barged into her room, wide-eyed and panting like he’d just run laps around the ship. Her pen skittered ungracefully across the page as her door slammed against the wall.

“Lucretia!” He huffed, “Do you have any idea where - oh.”

“Do you want to continue,” she asked after a moment, “or should I assume that you came here for - “

“Yeah, no, that’s it,” he said, stepping across the room to stare at the glowing blue tank with something like awe. “How did you get this in here?”

“I ran this entire ship on my own for a whole year and that’s what breaks your suspension of disbelief?” She asked, setting her journal down and turning to face him.

“Point taken,” he said with a laugh, laying his hand against the glass. From inside, the voidfish hummed in greeting. “ _Why_ is it in here though?”

“We can’t keep it in spare-parts storage forever,” she replied, “and my room is the biggest. It just makes the most sense.”

“Wow,” Magnus said softly, running his thumb gently over the glass between him and the voidfish. “That’s… that’s really nice, Lucretia.”

She shifted in her chair, unsure how to meet the look of unmasked sincerity on his face. “I’m sure anyone else would have done it if they were in the same position,” she said.

“Yeah, but they _didn’t_ ,” he said smugly, flashing her such a bright grin that she shifted slightly under the glare of it. “I still get to visit, right?”

“I think it would be pretty insulted if you didn’t,” she replied, watching as the fish blinked sharply in agreement.

“Yeah,” he said, “but it also won’t be lonely anymore.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me about TAZ at fuzzy-face.tumblr.com


End file.
